


sunday in the park

by iroirong



Series: allopreening [6]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Barbara Gordon is Oracle, Batfamily (DCU), Dick Grayson is Nightwing, Gen, Picnics, Tim Drake is Robin, but at this point there really just isn't any canon im adhering to enough to diverge., i would keep tagging these as canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:15:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25891201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iroirong/pseuds/iroirong
Summary: Quiet picnic lunches aren't usually in the cards for this family.alternatively: meditations upon the ADA.
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Tim Drake & Barbara Gordon
Series: allopreening [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/440398
Comments: 5
Kudos: 88





	sunday in the park

**Author's Note:**

> shows up four years late 2 my own fic w starbucks

In the geographic midpoint of Gotham City was Robinson Park, which claimed to be "Gotham City's Central Park," and certainly lived up to the branding, if not in the way the tourism board probably wished it did. On an average year, the park saw about 112 counts of muggings, assaults, or auto burglaries, which meant every three days, some sort of crime would go down. So logically, the other two days should be fine.

Of course, when this was mentioned, Tim wouldn't hesitate to point out that "that's not how statistics work, Jason."

Really, for the vast majority of weekdays, the park was quiet and peaceful. However, crime always spiked around holidays, with the weeks between Christmas and New Years Day accounting for 30 of those 112 muggings, and the weekends throughout the rest of the year taking up the slack. Robinson Park did deviate from its Gotham City reputation in one respect, however; the most dangerous and crime-ridden time to visit was not after dark like a tourist would expect, but in the late afternoon, when the throngs of people having a Sunday lunch in the park would be highest.

Naturally, Dick decided that they would be having Sunday lunch at Robinson Park.

* * *

The neighborhood to the west of Robinson Park used to be a Japantown, but by the time Tim's grandfather had been the head of the Drake family, internment and assimilation afterward had left Robinson Heights looking more or less like the neighboring communities around it. There were still a few remnants of the nihonmachi in the modern-day city: the old Buddhist church had been refitted into a Japanese Community Center, the language school was now a library with weekend English lessons in session, and most importantly to Tim, on the corner of Uston and Mary was a convenience store that still sold Japanese snacks.

"Oh, also grab a bag of the green tea KitKats," Tim called, weighing two different flavors of shrimp chips in either hand. Jason didn't respond, and Tim glanced over his shoulder to see his older brother looking very intently at the stand full of imported Kit Kats.

"This one says Soy Sauce on it, Tim." Jason finally said, turning around with the offending bag in his hands. "Please tell me that's a mistake, Tim."

"Oh, that one doesn't taste that good. The tea ones are the best, get those."

"Yeah, I'd bet a soy sauce flavored Kit Kat wouldn't taste that good. What the fuck?"

"No, no, it tastes more like maple syrup than anything else. I had them last time we came here, total disappointment."

Tim glanced back at his shrimp chips, then shrugged and put both types in their cart. "Come on, let's check out and then go hit the book sale."

Jason walked over, then replaced one of the wasabi shrimp chips in the cart for an original flavor bag. "Jesus, you don't have functioning taste buds." Tim stuck his tongue out, both to be a brat and to present refuting visual evidence.

The cashier at the register was an older woman, though Tim had never seen her before. Probably a sister of one of the owners, who were a middle-aged Japanese couple, one of whom inherited the store from his immigrant parents.

"Will that be all?" She asked, in a thick Californian drawl. 

Jason smiled at her in a way everyone for some reason thought was charming. "Yeah, and we brought our own bags."

He shook out the tote bags that Barbara had handed them earlier, each printed with a slightly dumb book-related graphic on the front. The chips went into a bag marked with "THESE BOOKS ARE PROBABLY OVERDUE" in bold Helvetica font, while their various sodas and candies went into the tote bag with "Drink tea. Read books. Be happy." printed in a curly faux-cursive font. Jason made Tim hold both bags, because "older sibling privilege."

He had, of course, reserved the worst for himself. Tim groaned when he saw it. 

"Jason, that's a lie."

Jason frowned, looking down at the bag that proclaimed for all to see that he "likes big books and cannot lie." 

"Yeah, I do still think that any book over seven hundred pages needs a better editor."

"No taste," Tim said.

* * *

Barbara was in a fight with the world, and she was winning.

Well, she was in a fight with Gotham City sidewalks, and she was probably up by one in the third quarter but it was still anyone's game.

She cursed as she came upon yet another sharp break in the sidewalk, where the cement had been cracked in two by the very stubborn roots of a sugar maple.

"I swear, I've called the city about fixing this damn sidewalk in particular at least a dozen times," Barbara said, setting her hands further back on her wheels than she usually would. "If I have to do this one more time, I'm gonna lose it."

Dick smiled next to her. "Our noble vigilante hero, both in and out of costume."

"Oh, that's the best part of not having to be in the field anymore," Barbara said. "No more uncomfortable costumes."

"Hey, I thought your costume was pretty good. You need a hand here, or is the slope manageable?"

"It's fine. And you never had to deal with a wedgie while you're in that stupid costume."

Hurdle cleared, Barbara turned to survey the park. There was a path that meandered diagonally through the whole thing, which was good news for her in a manual wheelchair, but finding a place to set up camp for four people would be a little hard. It was a crisp March day, and the ground was a little soggy, even muddy in some places, which meant a walk in the park would quickly get a little disgusting for a manual wheelchair user.

"What about over there, under that tree?" Dick asked, pointing to one of the evergreen trees that shaded over a small part near water. Barbara made a face, thinking about leaf litter. "Oh come on, Babs," Dick wheedled, "it's under a tree! The ground should be firm, roots mean stability."

"Roots get in my fucking way," Barbara muttered. 

"I'll check it out for you, just to be sure," Dick said and shot her one of his smirks, her least favorite of his. That was the 'I know I'm gonna get away with this and you'll have to grudgingly agree' smirk.

Five minutes later, on ground that Dick had jumped on to prove was rock solid -- not even a topsoil dust layer to get anywhere -- Barbara shook out the picnic blanket and laid it down. Dick promptly sat on it and smiled sunnily up at her, his 'I told you so' grin. She rolled her eyes.

"Where, exactly, are your brothers now?"

"Who knows. They're supposed to be grabbing snacks and checking out some book sale, but I bet Tim's already tried to hit Jason over their differing opinions on Arthur Miller."

"Jason likes Arthur Miller?" Barbara asked, arching an eyebrow. She could do it perfectly, which always made Dick think, a little oedipally, of Bruce. 

"Worse. Tim does."

"Huh, I didn't think he was the type."

Dick leaned back on his hands, before frowning. "Aren't you taking some kind of course about him anyways? American authors from the 20th century, or something."

"Last semester," Barbara said, "I'm surprised you remembered."

"Hey, us mere mortals without photographic memories still have the capacity to remember some things, you know."

Barbara laughed, before noticing two figures approaching out of the corner of her eye. She turned, and Dick leaned back to see around her.

"Ah, shit," they heard Jason yell, much to the displeasure of a nearby man pushing a stroller. "Babs, you better not come here, it's muddy as f--"

He was cut off by an elbow to the gut from Tim, who was otherwise slowed down by two overfull bags of junk food. Jason recovered quickly, bouncing from foot to foot to demonstrate the squelching noise produced by his boots and the mud. 

"Wow," Barbara muttered, "you guys really are brothers."

"I don't look that dumb," Dick responded, smiling.

"Dumb as who?" Tim asked rhetorically, having left Jason behind in order to catch up to them. He upended their bounty onto the gingham, leaving Barbara to lean down and snag the bag of original flavor shrimp chips, and Dick to grab a bottle of soda at random.

When Jason finally ambled over to the rest of the troop, Dick held out his hand. "You better not step on this blanket with those shoes."

Jason scoffed. "I see how it is. Shoot the messenger." He high fived Dicks hand, just to be annoying, and then sat down pointedly on the blanket anyways. Barbara did note that he still kept his shoes from touching the actual fabric of the blanket. Digging around in his book bag, he pulled out a slim volume -- Paradise Lost, reprinted with a sleek black cover and minimalistic design. 

"Shakespeare in the park!" He proclaimed.

"That's not-- whatever." Tim sighed, pulling open a bag of Kit Kats.

Dick tilted his head thoughtfully. "You ever wonder how the supervillain the Penguin feels about the publishing company, Penguin?"

Jason paused. "No." He went back to his book.

"Well, speaking of the nightlife of this fine city," Tim said, "how's that new Batgirl doing?"

"She's fine," Barbara said. "She's with Bruce right now. They're working some case: there's this new Riddler-type villain who's been popping up here and there. I don't know, I didn't ask too many questions, and it's a more North-side thing, so not strictly "Batgirl" business."

"Batman getting territorial? Perish the thought." Dick said. Barbara snorted.

"It's like we have a split custody arrangement, and he's taking her for a week without telling me." She said. "As soon as I think she's ready to interact with more people, I'm introducing Cass to the Birds of Prey and returning the favor."

They talked for a little longer, catching up on all the superhero gossip from Gotham that Dick and Jason missed out on by living an hour south. Tim had also brought with him a basket -- a real, true-to-life, picnic basket that Jason would not stop making fun of -- full of cucumber sandwiches, courtesy of Alfred. It was in all a pretty good lunch, if a little late in the day.

Gotham in the spring was not all that different from Gotham in the winter if perhaps a little warmer at high noon. However, the sun only ever got three summer months to make count, when the fog and clouds wouldn't overpower it completely, and it certainly was not going to beat the stacked odds on this cold March day. By the time they had finished up their food, packing the scraps away and tossing the plastic bags in the trash, the light in the sky had already gone golden in preparation for sunset.

So, naturally, that's when Tim turned, glimpsing a sudden movement in his peripheral, and noticed a pickpocket attempt gone wrong. A younger man was now violently tugging at an older woman's purse, both holding onto it with a death grip. The straps of the purse were still snaked around the woman's arm, and Tim could see that with one bad pull, the woman's shoulder could be wrenched wrong.

The stats, Tim cursed. He knew it.

He turned to alert the other three not-currently-costumed vigilantes, only to make eye contact with Barbara, who winked at him and reached her hand down to the side of her wheelchair. Without breaking eye contact, she pulled out what looked like a police issue baton, flicked it sharply with her wrist to expand it out, and swung it underhand at the crime in progress.

He watched, slightly shocked, as the baton flung end over end, only to impact the would-be mugger in exactly the right spot on the temple to drop him where he stood. Barbara had already started wheeling over, both to collect her baton and reassure the woman.

"There she goes," Dick said from behind Tim, a smile clear in his voice. "Our noble vigilante hero, in and out of costume."


End file.
